Celts Boat and civilisation

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Hi there. I'm new here. I discovered this mods a few hours ago and quickly read everything on the website about it. I'm totally enthusiast about it.

I red the celtic tribe description and I find that it doesn't give justice to the celts civilisation :

-in the game they will have poor navy : this is historically inaccurate. Many gauls and britons tribes were well known for their superior boat crafting skill (the britons would even one day become the first naval power (england)). We do know that their vessels were fashioned from strong wood, and reinforced with iron belts much like a wooden barrel. We also know that the Celts built their ships big, Caesar himself notes this in his campaign against the Venetii.

- «The Britons and Gauls are the antithesis of the rigid organisation of Rome.» : Completely false. This makes them look like unorganized savage. They were very organised and civilised. And while their military side was not as organized as the roman (who around that time was more organized then the romans legion anyway?), they were highly capable of advanced tactics, especially ambushing ones.

- «They construct mostly wooden buildings, which are fast and inexpensive to construct, though far less robust than their stone counterparts.» : they did use a lot of woods, but most of their cities were made of stone. PLus the romans have always been impressed by the Gaulish architectural knowledge, especially their bridge, which were known to be more durable than the romans ones. Additionally, the Gauls were known for their great fortress that even the roman siege weaponry could not destroy : Alesia is a typical example : Caesar could not take it by assaulting it and was forced to siege it to starvation instead.

In fact, the Gaulish buildings were far more durable than any other roman buildings.

- I saw some graphics and many celts don't look equipped at all. Some are even bare chested. It's not accurate since celts were known to be great amateur of clothe : they accorded a great important to how they dress and often wore many colorful and fine clothes. This was the same case for the warrior : the number of warrior going bare chested or naked to battle was very limited, and it was often only members of specific cults.

Additionally the gauls were very competent smith, and a good percentage were equipped with fine armor.

I know some stuff are here for game plays sakes, but it's unfair to give the celts the «Zerg» role (if you play starcraft you will understand, if not just google it, you will quickly understand).

This project really looks amazing, but i'm afraid it falls under the stereotype (like many games including rome total war) : Rome are the civilized good guys and fight to bring this «civilisation» to the savage and mindless barbarian of the north, whose only tactics is too swarm the enemy with tons of unequipped canon folder.

Have you already acknowledge those inaccuracy? Is it possible that the description of the game civilisation are outdated? Will you give those celts the a more civilized look?

thanks for the answers.

EDIT : I posted this in two different place since I don't know were it belongs. Feel free to delete one the the two.

Edited February 19, 2012 by GueulEclator

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The Celts in the game are as "organized" as the player wants to make them. Also, only about 25% of the Celtic units are bare chested, usually raw recruits and skirmisher-type soldiers. The rest wear multi-colored shirts and tunics and pants, and/or armor.

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But yet, they looked pretty much like idiots in the description, and their strenght seems to be based on massing cheap but not durable units and structure, which was the opposite of the civilisation. Especially concerning the strucutres.

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But yet, they looked pretty much like idiots in the description, and their strenght seems to be based on massing cheap but not durable units and structure, which was the opposite of the civilisation. Especially concerning the strucutres.

Their city wall will be based on the stone/wood/turf walls they used. Due to Caesar's description, rams will get a negative attack multiplier vs. the Celt walls. I'm thinking the Germans in Part 2 will have the easily destroyed "wooden" structures. Hunnic buildings will be even weaker.

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The swarming role should be given to other civilizations instead? In that case, what role will the celt civilization have in the final release?

Does this also means that all their structure will also be accurately stronger?

But what bothers me the most is their ship, since they were clearly known to build huge and solid ship.

I propose to change their descrition : The Britons and Gauls are the antithesis of the rigid organisation of Rome. It's innacurate, since they were known to have highly organised society, and capable of complex strategy. However, they put less emphasis on military tactics than the romans, but they had equal strategy.

In my opinion their strength should be :

-strong structures

-strong infantry, fast to train, high attack

-fast and efficient cavalry

- good navy

Weakness :

-bad archer

- high unit cost in food?

- lack of siege weapons.

By the way, I'm currently downloading the mod, and from the videos that i watched, I can tell this will be a huge success by it's release : free + awesome = best game ever.

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Yet, in the description, it says they have a poor navy and that their structure are less strong , which are both kind of inaccurate. So in the end my question is : will there be some change on this? Will their boats be stronger (not the strongest) and their structure be more resistant than lets say the romans? Will they look less savage in the description?

I just started playing this game and I can tell i'm impressed by the engine.

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I'll probably just leave the Celt building strength at "default" levels... no bonus or weakness. So, basically the Romans, Iberians, Celts, and Carthaginians (except whose walls are super strong) have buildings that are roughly the same strength. They represent the "default," while Greeks have 10% stronger buildings and Persians have 25% stronger buildings (Greek and Persian buildings also take 10% and 25% longer to construct, respectively). I'm thinking in Part 2, Germanian buildings will be -10% weaker and Hunnic buildings -50% weaker (but super cheap and fast to build).

The "poor navy" for the Celts just means they don't have a wide variety of warships and probably not very many naval technologies. They just have the big oak warship you see in the screenshot. But by default it has beefier stats--high hitpoints and a big garrison capacity.

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thanks for your patience and answers. My suggestion would just to change a little detail : the brief description of the celts. change the «The Britons and Gauls are the antithesis of the rigid organisation of Rome.» line to something more accurate. But it's just a detail.

One last question off topic : I'm pretty sure this has been asked, but when I see your game, I can't think of anything else than : «Wow! It's completely look like unofficial age of empire 4! Cool!». Would you, yourself, compare your work to an unofficial Age of Empire 4? Or do you think this game is different, another kind of game?

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thanks for your patience and answers. My suggestion would just to change a little detail : the brief description of the celts. change the «The Britons and Gauls are the antithesis of the rigid organisation of Rome.» line to something more accurate. But it's just a detail.

One last question off topic : I'm pretty sure this has been asked, but when I see your game, I can't think of anything else than : «Wow! It's completely look like unofficial age of empire 4! Cool!». Would you, yourself, compare your work to an unofficial Age of Empire 4? Or do you think this game is different, another kind of game?

The game is inspired by Age of Empires, but we aren't beholden to it. We feel free to have different features and gameplay.

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Huns didnt exactly have buildings till they practically anihalated the western roman empire, (i.e rome itself) until they thought, "hey, its wet muggy and cold out here, but its warm in here, i think i like warm"

Beforehand they lived in tentlike things no? So huns could like live off the land, and not have to build settlements and territory structures. (o rhave no tracts of teritory on the map at all)

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- «The Britons and Gauls are the antithesis of the rigid organisation of Rome.» : Completely false. This makes them look like unorganized savage. They were very organised and civilised.

Indeed I think they where organized in a much different way other cultures where. Their leaders formed alliances and partnerships in trade, warfare and exchange of technology and there upraising depended much more on skill then on ancestry compared to other cultures. Their religion was not as uniform as it seams natural to us now. There where many cults and circles that could be called epistemic communities with different forms of believe, not necessarily having a personalized god to pray to and many different gods 'known'. So the 'celts' didn't in fact act all together like the romans with their centralized hierarchic structure. and so could be called 'unorganized'. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, though. In history they at least managed to upraise again 800 years later as they took part in forming the later vikings with similar social structures. Today flat hirarchical structures, due to the high amount of wealth and social stability, are quite successful as can be seen in open source projects in general and this project specifically.